Priska C. Juschka Fine Art is pleased to present One-Dog Night, Ryan Schneider’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. By brushing, scraping, and flinging bright colors of oil, Schneider presents us with canvases that expose subtle openings of pathos and sublimity, skewing the reality of day-to-day interactions.

With a contemporary sensibility, Schneider deploys lessons of modernism, reconfiguring them into his own visions
of nervous domesticity and interrupted leisure. Drawing on found
images, his memories and relationships, personal photographs, and
imagined decor, he constructs environments that formally invite the
viewer in. He then reverses the assumed roles of interior and exterior
space for his audience by seating them in an awkward, broken chair, and
then kindly directing their gaze out the window. The figures that drape
these constructed spaces exude a sinister innocence, appearing caught
by surprise, their self absorption evident. The viewer is the voyeur,
and is left with a sense that these characters’ actions will continue
long after they cease to be scrutinized.

Schneider’s painting technique ranges from awkward and crude to surprisingly
graceful. His concern with the medium is physical – he thickly layers
paint and then scrapes it away with a palette knife, revealing what is
beneath the surface. Schneider similarly does this with his
characters by layering them into his compositions. They appear
pre-occupied and unaware. He then exposes them, revealing their
complicity and gradually allowing them to assert a complete
personality.

A vast array of character nuances resonates from Schneider’s subjects. Traces of traits such as strength, fear, humor, stubbornness,
and eccentricity are what remain of the image after one has finished
digesting its meaning, giving these works unusual gravity and
unleashing enormous psychological power.

Ryan Schneider was born in Indianapolis, IN and currently lives and works in New York
City. He holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art,
Baltimore. He has previously exhibited in numerous group shows both
domestically, in New York, Baltimore, and Atlanta, and abroad in London
and Aix-en-Provence. The artist has also independently published
several poetry anthologies. This is his second solo show at the gallery.